As I mentioned a couple of posts back, the claim that mainstream science is totally wrong about global warming is an orthodoxy that is almost universal among commentators, bloggers and thinktanks on the political right in Australia, even though the great majority of ordinary Australians, including Coalition supporters, believe the science.
The great majority of Australian take the view that, while scientists aren’t always right, it’s much better to act on the basis of the best available science than to assume that the scientists are wrong. For this, they are attacked by rightwing commentators as religious fanatics or, at best gullible innocents.
One limited exception to this appeared to be the Centre for Independent Studies. A while back Andrew Norton got stuck into Clive Hamilton for listing CIS in the delusionist camp on the basis of some fairly tenuous links. As Norton observed, the CIS had never published much on the topic (though what it did publish was in line with delusionist orthodoxy) and had published nothing since 2003.
CIS has made up for it now, with this piece by Arthur Herman (also published, less surprisingly, in the Oz). It’s got everything – “global warming as a religion”, Al Gore conspiracy theories, Godwin’s Law violations on eugenics, the Spanish Inquisition and so on, backed up by some typically dodgy Internet factoids. As with much in this genre, it’s important to note the call for the replacement of science, as it currently exists, with “real science” in which people like Herman (self-described as “an historian and author”) will lay down the rules.
What’s striking here is the contrast between the willingness of just about everyone on the political right to sign up to a set of beliefs that are dictated entirely by political tribalism and their self-perception as brave heretics, spelt out in more than usually ludicrous fashion by Herman.
Tim Lambert does garbage pickup on Herman’s “facts”. Strikingly, given that he’s supposed to be an (sic) historian, Herman seems to have a lot of trouble with dates and references. And there’s more from Nexus 6 and Gary Sauer-Thompson.
Update: In a comment from Jennifer Marohasy it was announced that Michael Duffy was willing to give $1000 to anyone who would nominate ““Some work/some research results that have been published in reputable scientific journals that:
1. examine the causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming, and
2. quantify the extent of the warming from anthropogenic carbon dioxide. ”
Several people provided responses and, after coming back from my hiatus I wrote to Duffy asking the status of my offer. He replied “I asked Jennifer Marohasy about this, because she’s the one who needs to be satisfied. ” and appended a response from her indicating that she was, in fact, not satisfied.
From the original statement, I didn’t realise that Duffy meant to include “satisfactory to Jennifer Marohasy” as a term of the offer. Now that we’ve cleared that up, I think we can regard the offer as in line with the Socratic irony approach to scientific discussion.
There seems to have been something of a meltdown chez Marohasy, so I think we can take this offer as being off the table for all practical purposes
John Quiggin 
To me it is the inconsistency of the Libertarians that betrays their bias. I won’t hold my breath waiting to see them apply the same degree of skepticism and statistical proof to their own cherished economic theories. Anyone familiar with the accuracy of economic forecasting would fall about laughing at someone who won’t accept evidence for anthropogenic climate change yet is still happy to believe unregulated free market economic theories.
There’s no future in attempting to dissuade delusionals from their beliefs Ben. The best that could possibly happen were you somehow to succeed in helping a delusional to see clearly at last their mistake would be for the helped one to hate you bitterly ever after for it. “No good deed goes unpunished” etc. No, just enjoy the entertainment that self-anointed climate scientists of the calibre of Arthur and Jenny present to us for our pleasure (while of course wishing them well).
Speaking of respect though, Ben – it’s typically earned if you’re to get it at all.
Call your target audience names until they submit through fear of looking stupid.
Oh dear, if that’s what you got from this post then there’s no hope for you, you are delusional.
Your para two is complete bollocks. Did you actually read the Arthur Herman piece? Or anything by Bolt? And then claim that these people never use personal attacks or insults? Do you ever read the counter-pieces, explaining in simple terms why they’re wrong?
A quick glance over Herman’s article reveals rhetoric parading as science. Not worth the effort.
Mr Herman refers to “gas-driven lawnmowers”.
I bet the LPG tank takes up half the room in the grass-catcher.
I take Jennifers question to mean that Anthropogenic Global Warming is essentially accepted, hence the move onto, what seems to me, a red herring – anthropogenic CO2.
Is it significantly different from other CO2 in it’s molecular structure or warming effect?
And then what – will we be asked to provide links to studies that look at country-specific CO2, eg. the causal link between Australian-anthropogenic CO2 and warming?
Our Jennifer is, as usual, being disingenuous. As I’ve said before, she’s either a liar or a fool, the categories not being mutually exclusive.
On to my main point. A few people have expressed surprise at the Right’s obdurate denial of the evidence for climate change, but I think I understand it, in part at least. It’s because they’d have to admit that the hippies were right (or at least less wrong) forty years ago. Please excuse the lengthy and discursive musings which follow.
About forty years ago, the people I hung about with could have been loosely described as the psychedelic left. Although I’m sure most of us had never heard of Hubberd’s Peak, we could see that it was self-evident that the oil would run out sooner rather than later and the best time to think of alternatives was while there was still a fair bit left. Additionally, anyone with a smattering of mathematics could see that unrestrained growth of both population and economies just wasn’t possible (let alone a good idea), given a finite world in which to do it. As well as that, we could see there were problems with dumping a whole lot of stuff into the air and water.
Turns out the hippies were right, and the Right were wrong. Oh, we were right about Vietnam, too, which seems to be another thing they can’t forgive us for.
The real mystery is why anybody still tries to discuss these issues with the denialists. It’s as productive as discussing with Mohammed al Fayed the car crash which killed his son Dodi and Princess Diana.
In both cases, the protagonists believe that the mainstream view is part of a conspiracy to hide the truth (climate scientists are just out to get research grants; Diana and Dodi were murdered by MI6 on the orders of Prince Phillip; etc) and any contrary evidence is part of the conspiracy.
There is no logical or factual way of changing the mind of anybody who thinks like that, so why bother?
Why the hell has this turned into an anti-libertarian thing? There are plenty of libertarians who are quite happy to accept the prevailing scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
BBB
“There are plenty of libertarians who are quite happy to accept the prevailing scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.”
For example …
Hi Jennifer,
References for you and Duffy:
Callendar, G.S., 1938: The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223–237.
Although old this is pre-computer modelling and explains the physical principles involved from the basics – it is a “seminal” paper as CoRev suggests. The IPCC cite it as one of the first sources to examine the connection between CO2 and global temperature against temperature measurements (you didn’t specify recent). The mechanisms are still the same as they were then and because it is so early it gives an overview rather than today’s hyperspecialisation.
All that is necessary is to use more up-to-date figures for CO2 caused radiative forcing (as we now call it) in Chamberlain’s equation for the determination of temperature by forcing and an estimate of how much of the CO2 has been added by humans.
This is supplied by:
D. J . HOFMANN, J. H. BUTLER, E. J . DLUGOKENCKY, J . W. ELKINS, K. MASARIE, S. A. MONTZKA and P. TANS, The role of carbon dioxide in climate forcing from 1979 to 2004: introduction of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Tellus B, Vol 58, Issue 5, pp.614-619, 2006.
This explicitly states, inter alia:
“Calculation of radiative forcing does not rely on climate feedbacks (e.g., changes in albedo or atmospheric water vapour content), and computationally intensive climate models are not needed.”, so no carping about this being a model or a theory, not scientific observational measurement.
Tell Duffy to pay up. 15 day terms. I accept Paypal. If you are unable to access copies of these papers I am happy to email them to you.
Spiros, Tyler Cowen and a decent slab of his commenting audience for a start.
BBB
You don’t actually expect to get the money, do you James? The original challenge wasn’t made in good faith, so the assessment of contenders won’t be done in good faith either.
It will be interesting to see if Michael Duffy is carrying on Kent Hovind’s tradition. Fitting that this thread has already had the “AGW is a hypothesis not a fact” treatment.
And to test this hypothesis I present: Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years by Thomas Crowley. It was published in Science (July 14, 2000 Science, 289: 270-277).
The abstract reads:
Recent reconstructions of northern hemisphere temperatures and climate forcing over the last 1000 years allow the warming of the 20th century to be placed within a historical context and various mechanisms of climate change to be tested. Comparison of observations with simulations from an energy balance climate model indicate that as much as 41-64% of pre-anthropogenic (pre-1850) decadal-scale temperature variations were due to changes in solar irradiance and volcanism. Removal of the forced response from reconstructed temperature time series yields residuals that show similar variability to control runs of coupled models, thereby lending support to the models’ value as estimates of low-frequency variability in the climate system. Removal of all forcing except greenhouse gases from the ~1000 year time series results in a residual with a very large late 20th century warming that closely agrees with the response predicted from greenhouse gas forcing. The combination of a unique level of temperature increase in the late 20th century and improved constraints on the role of natural variability provides further evidence that the greenhouse effect has already established itself above the level of natural variability in the climate system. A 21st century global warming projection far exceeds the natural variability of the last 1000 years and is greater than the best estimate of global temperature change for the last interglacial.
There’s as much chance of Duffy paying up as there is of Jennifer Marohassy putting on a bikini and competing in the Olympic beach volleyball.
When will you people learn not to bother with these characters?
James has delivered checkmate, top stuff James. They lose more if they don’t pay up.
I’m just looking forward to phoning Counterpoint every week and accusing him of Welshing. Sides, I learned a bit from reading those papers.
Thanks guys. I shall be critically reviewing the papers you suggest to see if they fit the bill. So far from the above thread I have:
1. Callendar, G.S., 1938: The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 64, 223–237.
2. D. J . HOFMANN, J. H. BUTLER, E. J . DLUGOKENCKY, J . W. ELKINS, K. MASARIE, S. A. MONTZKA and P. TANS, The role of carbon dioxide in climate forcing from 1979 to 2004: introduction of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Tellus B, Vol 58, Issue 5, pp.614-619, 2006.
3. Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years by Thomas Crowley. It was published in Science (July 14, 2000 Science, 289: 270-277).
But give me a few days and I’m not sure how long Michael will need. Also you could potentially speed up the process by emailing me pdfs. The address is: jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com
Brazen stuff, Jennifer. I wish I could get others to do my research for me!
BBB
James, I’ve engaged with Counterpoint on their dishonesty a couple of times in the past. Your phone calls will be ignored (and certainly not aired), and any emails you send will not be displayed on their website (or not, at least, until the moment is so far past that no-one will ever read them).
You’ve wasted your time with Our Jennifer as well, as a number of people have already pointed out. She’s as well acquainted with the science as anyone else, she just chooses to deny it. She has been given equally impressive references in the past, many, many times.
Brazen, at the very least.
Jennifer expounds her considered view, then asks contributors at a blog if they could kindly point her in the direction of the scientific research pertaining to that view.
Credit to her……..I’d be way too embarrassed.
“Brazen stuff, Jennifer. I wish I could get others to do my research for me!”
Jennifer – Perhaps in return for this you could post us the research that you used to make the claim that warming has stopped for the last 10 years.
You still have not coughed up that one!
Since we are being somebody else’s research assistant, I thought that I’d think up some excuses for Michael Duffy to use in advance:
* OMG, there’s a climate model involved
* OMG, the only cites that you can come up with are really old
* OMG, it uses data from MBH
* OMG, it’s just not good enough
* If these papers really had evidence why did ten billion scientists sign a petition against global warming
* OMG, the authors are just in it for the funding
* You call those respectable journals? Where are the energy & environment papers?
* A guy on a blog thinks those papers are dumb
Jennifer, your request would look more genuine if it preceded your opinion pieces, but if you are prepared to review those opinions in the light of overwhelming scientific opinion, that can only be good. Just remember that the critiques of climate science need to be subjected to careful scrutiny before being presumed true (and the vast body of scientific knowledge presumed false). And when working scientists consistently tell you those arguments don’t hold up they are almost certainly correct. Articles intended to persuade the lay public generally sound more convincing, but only to the lay public – whilst being clearly seen as drivel by those who actually spent 5-10 years studying the subject prior to commencing their career.
Oh, if you are looking for a face saving way of changing your views you could take a leaf from alpha denialist, Bob Carter’s book, and talk about ocean acidification. That way can support emission reduction policies but still claim AGW is overblown.
Bingo Bango Boingo Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
“Why the hell has this turned into an anti-libertarian thing?”
As someone who considered himself a small l liberal, my view is the whole movement ( including the Liberal party) has been taken over by right wing nutters. And nutters it is, reality is going to make all this sound and fury irrelevant. The ice is still going to melt.
What did I learn reading this thread, Jennifer Marohasy needs to learn how to find the library, a good start is nothing more complicated than going to wikipedia and typing in greenhouse gas,the explanation is pretty clear and really isn’t that hard to understand.
Perhaps post 57 is right, it’s nothing more than the last salvos fired in retreat.
I’m interested in the link between climate change “sceptics” and stolen generations sceptics. High profile names such as Bolt, Windschuttle, Chris Mitchell of the Australian … anyone who’s anyone on the Right of the culture wars. No doubt David Irving, if anyone asked him would reckon both were left-wing myths.
Most deniers of one, it seems, are deniers of the other. A clique raging against science.
Ken Miles, it doesn’t matter what excuse Duffy comes up with – he didn’t say anything about the papers measuring up to his satisfaction, just to the specifications of Jennifer’s request. Nor did he phrase it as a bet, but as a statement that he would pay for something that met those conditions. You’re welcome to join me as plaintiff at the small claims tribunal if he doesn’t pay up. Any bush lawyers out there find any faults in this reasoning?
What Jennifer should be asking for, I think, are the papers behind the estimate of 3 degrees for climate sensitivity. That’s the one parameter, more than any other, which sums up the case for AGW being catastrophic; whereas, e.g., Lindzen thinks it’s just 1 degree, which would not be catastrophic. And the number has an interesting history; I gather it was an estimate made in the 1970s by Jule Charney and others, which remains as the consensus value; what has evolved over time is the range of values considered realistic (with the lower bound increasing, according to the IPCC review). My impression is that the evidence for the number comes from two directions: from general climate models and from paleoclimatology. Understanding this history should be of interest to everyone – obviously the skeptics should be scrutinizing it for evidence that the persistence of 3 degrees as the consensus is just groupthink and “theory bias”; but equally, if one assumes that climatology has done its job properly and actually validated Charney’s estimate, it would be worth understanding how he arrived at that estimate, because it presumably derives from a simple yet valid argument.
There are definitely IPCC chapters reviewing this stuff, so people seeking sources can look there. I regret I’ve never had time to look into the details myself. There may also be some leads here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/climate-research-media-focus-whiplash/#comment-71720
Re:
“What’s striking here is the contrast between the willingness of just about everyone on the political right to sign up to a set of beliefs that are dictated entirely by political tribalism and their self-perception as brave heretics, spelt out in more than usually ludicrous fashion by Herman”.
and the dominance of the Australian media by opinionated pundits of a reactionary ilk. Murohassy has been successfully peddling her brand of faux science to the rural sector via ‘The Land’foer quite some time as well as Duffy’s mediocre representation of a critical Sydney intellectual. When they can show me their own scientific research equivalent appropriately peer reviewed disproving the theoretical basis of the AGW and CO2 hypothesis then they may have some credibility. Murohassy would do well to study the laws of thermodynamics.
I critic the first (Hoffmann et al) of the three papers listed early today in this thread as a new blog post here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003319.html .
Cheers.
Who is this Jennifer person, why can’t she spell “critique” even after Ken has given her the answer, and why are you doing her work? I’ve got some hideously complicated rural estate planning stuff here that I can barely face, if youz are bored.
No, apparently they can’t get enough of this marvellously scented Jennifer person Sean. You probably used to think they were most interested in people who not only could spell but were also a little bit schooled in thermodynamics (or physics, climate science or economics, or whatever else it was taking JQ’s fancy for the moment). But now! – such a sad pass some commenters have come to; one despairs.
David at #57
You remind me of someone I knew in Kuranda around 1970 !
We all knew who the Club of Rome was and could quote the numbers from Limits to Growth.
Now it looks like the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
But to your more interesting point: The hippies were right, and as the all-to-readily identifiable proxy for the Left, their association with the environmental cause gave the issue a political bias the ramifications of which are being fought out in blogs like this. Teh Environment is a Lefty thing that die-hard conservatives hate with a passion that’s deeply rooted in their reptillian cortex. It’s all about reflex, not reason.
I’ve given up trying to argue the science. Now I just resort to ridicule. At least I come away from the fight less frustrated.
It might’ve been better had we been wrong. The word Pyrhhic springs to mind.
As to be expected Murohassy has critiqued the papers and hey presto – their faulty. Pity they never did engineering or chemical engineering or meteorology and then they would understand that entropy is king here.
At least Garnaut, JQ et al are trying to put a workable solution not resorting to theatrics and ad hominems.
Always new the fight would be on once the cost of pollution were sheeted home to producers and consumers alike. Failed to realise that many would prefer to die or destroy their world proving that they do not have to pay.
It might’ve been better had we been wrong. The word Pyrhhic springs to mind.
yes john that’s the worst thing – I wish ACC wasn’t true!
“As to be expected Murohassy has critiqued the papers and hey presto – their faulty.” – MH
I’m sure Jennifer is preparing to submit her research to the relevant journal demonstrating this to be so.
I just looked at Our Jennifer’s rejoinder linked @ 80 (I couldn’t help myself – a horrid fascination) and, as expected, she’s not convinced. She also introduces a rather clever ploy, one I’d never heard before (removes tongue from cheek), citing a paper that proposes that the increasing temperature (perhaps caused by something else entirely like maybe sunspots) is driving CO2 out of solution in sea water. I guess we could test this by sticking some litmus paper into the sea to see if its acidity has been correspondingly reduced.
So, is Our Jennifer a liar or a fool? You decide.
John @ 83, I’ve never been to Kuranda (I’m an Adelaide boy), but it seems we moved in similar circles.
My son and daughter-in-law have just been up from Mt Gambier for a few days, and my son postulated that the loony right actually have a mental disability that prevents them from accepting overwhelming evidence of things they don’t want to believe in. You’re right; it seems to be a reflex.
I guess we could test this by sticking some litmus paper into the sea to see if its acidity has been correspondingly reduced.
Small pedantic correction: The acidity is increased, the pH is reduced.
citing a paper that proposes that the increasing temperature (perhaps caused by something else entirely like maybe sunspots) is driving CO2 out of solution in sea water
More important correction: It didn’t come from a scientific paper – just a post on a blog. The work is pretty poor quality and wouldn’t be accepted into any quality journal.
Ken Miles, it doesn’t matter what excuse Duffy comes up with – he didn’t say anything about the papers measuring up to his satisfaction, just to the specifications of Jennifer’s request. Nor did he phrase it as a bet, but as a statement that he would pay for something that met those conditions. You’re welcome to join me as plaintiff at the small claims tribunal if he doesn’t pay up. Any bush lawyers out there find any faults in this reasoning?
I suspect/know that we are just going to see a bunch of rubbish excuses as to why you shouldn’t be paid. If Duffy has a shred of intellectual integrity then he will read the papers and pay up, but I expect to be disappointed.
However, I love the idea of Michael Duffy getting caught up in Jennifer Marohasy’s crude attempt at a gotcha. So I would be curious about the small claims option. ken.miles@gmail.com
Oh my, what a wonderful blog that is, Graeme Bird and Louis Hissink together with Duffy.
Re #80 Shorter Jennifer
I reject all conclusions made in any paper if I can think of an alternative – regardless of whether this alternative has already been covered elsewhere and can be located through citations therein.
This is an odd take on scholarship. No more short papers in learned journals, I’m afraid. The underpinning science will need to be discussed at length to satisfy those who demand instant gratification of their own priors.
Ken @ 89 – I thought the idea was that if CO2 was being driven out of solution by rising temperatures (totally unconnected with any human activity, of course) that the acidity of the ocean would be reduced. I may have misunderstood what Our Jennifer was getting at. I certainly didn’t read carefully enough to realise that her source for this hadn’t been published in a journal of some kind – I was skimming, so I could get out quickly before any of the stupid rubbed off on me.
As to Michael Duffy having any intellectual integrity – dream on.
David, sorry I misread you.
Removing carbon dioxide should decrease the acidity.
After reading this thread I wonder why people even bother engaging with Marohasy and others of her ilk? They will never admit they are wrong, for reasons of ego more than science. (It would be interesting to ask them when was the last time they ever admitted they were wrong about anything important to them in their lives.)
They write in a desperate attempt to obtain relevance in an area they have no qualifications or expertise in. They selectively quote facts that suit their pre-determined political beliefs, because their only real desire is to promote those beliefs. The politics is their main game, because that is either all they are interested in or all they understand. I say, don’t play their game. Ignore them, even use ridicule, and don’t read their blogs or articles. Its a waste of time – like trying to convince a religeous zealot using rational argument.
Here’s a real bet for these people – if they think the CC science is bunk, then inland rainfall is sure to soon “turn around” from the current “cyclical downturn”. Why don’t they borrow a few million and buy a rural property in the far west! Never mind the water license, it will recover, and you will get a bargain 🙂
Anyway, farmers my way are hoping for an “average’ year, after years of dry followed by a wet summer (turning lucerne into silage) all the signs indicate that things will be average.
My critique of the paper suggested by Ken Miles is here:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003315.html
(I was interested to see the reconstruction of past climate in the paper is based on the work of Michael Mann.)
Jen Marohasy,
You are making a complete ass out of yourself. Ken Parish banned you from Club Troppo earlier this year when you acted the goat over there.
If you were genuine you would direct your queries to a climate scientist with an extensive record of contemporaneous peer-reviewed literature in leading publications.
Oh dear, I did it. I looked at Jennifers “critique”.
And the prize goes to whoever first suggested that Jennifer’s weasel would be ‘it’s just comparing models’,
“In other words, the paper looks at the fit between output from two models. So the paper is about correlation not causation.“- JM
Jennifer the climate scientist finds herself “disappointed” with the paper.
I’m a touch “disppointed” that Jennifer seems to think that the actual recent measured global temperatures are merely “models”. What a pity that Jennifer has completely misunderstood the paper. And that she struggles with notions of correlation and causation. Yes, we’ve all heard that ‘correlation does not imply causation’, but Jennifer misunderstands this as well. More accurately, correlation does not prove causation, but it certainly does suggest it, and it bloody well is a pre-condition for establishing causation.
Most causation is inferred from careful experimental design of models that test various factors against observed reality – just like the Crowley paper.
Well it’s straight from the tobacco playbook, isn’t it? “Prove causation. I mean actual causation, not statistical correlation, etc. blah blah blah.”
BBB